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Supporting its people, driving its growth strategy, and enabling continuous optimisation of technology.
Since winning the industry’s much coveted ‘Supplier of the Year Award’ in 2012 with the launch of Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke Campaign’, Labelmakers has followed a strategy of growth through acquisition.
Now, with eight sites across Australia and New Zealand, Labelmakers is Australasia’s only vertically integrated and fully diversified packaging and label printing specialist. This vertically integrated business model gives Labelmakers a competitive advantage in terms of customer service, new product development, and speed-to-market. Local research and development (R&D) teams focus on innovation, sustainable label design, and continuous improvement.
Because Labelmakers has built a culture of partnering with specialists to deliver innovative outcomes, it fully recognises the value of its long-term and collaborative relationship with technology services provider Tecala.
Ali Tirgar – Head of IT at the Labelmakers Group – explains that since 2015 the two businesses have worked together in a continual process of transforming, managing, and optimising Labelmakers’ technology infrastructure and services.
“Tecala came highly recommended for their balance of Consultancy and Advisory Services, and their ability to deliver whole-of-business Managed IT Services and Support,” he recalls.
“IT has always been mission-critical for us. Our ERP systems, integrations, and networks keep operations running, so any downtime stops them cold – disrupting our business and hurting our clients. Since working with Tecala we’ve had secure connectivity and reliable system access to ensure everything runs smoothly.”
The partnership with Tecala began in late 2015 with a major project focusing on connecting the different sites across Australia and New Zealand.
“This project was driven by our acquisition strategy and had the objective to transition Labelmakers from isolated sites to a connected network with centralised systems,” explains Ali.
MPLS technology was chosen for its ability to deliver predictable, low-latency connections for mission-critical applications like R&D, data sharing, artwork approvals, and production scheduling.
The MPLS network supports high-volume file transfer, which is essential for transmitting large print files and packaging designs quickly between disparate teams. This ensures Labelmakers is always delivering fast, responsive, and reliable customer experiences.
“Once Tecala came on board, they connected all sites, giving the business complete visibility across the network. With a centrally created and managed network, performance could be monitored and optimised, and issues could be resolved quickly, even down to being able to ‘ping’ across the network to check site performance,” says Ali.
From there, the partnership expanded into Cloud Services with Tecala providing hosting and infrastructure-as-a-service capability through its own Private Cloud. This enterprise-grade, Australian-based private cloud infrastructure now delivers all Labelmakers’ applications, including its business-critical ERP systems and associated workloads.
The key benefit of Tecala’s Private Cloud is its scalability, flexibility, and uptime, which allows Labelmakers to quickly integrate and consolidate new acquisitions into the core IT environment very quickly.
“With business continuity so important for us, Tecala’s Private Cloud allows essential services like backup and disaster recovery to be delivered reliably and seamlessly in the background,” confirms Ali. “We’re mitigating the risk of downtime through redundant infrastructure, and I have assurance that operations, production schedules, and, most importantly, client services aren’t disrupted.”
Microsoft 365 – including Outlook, Teams and Teams Voice, SharePoint, and OneDrive – is part of a broad ecosystem that delivers a centralised communications, automation and business intelligence platforms. It ensures Labelmaker’s teams can collaborate in real time throughout Australia and across the ditch with colleagues in New Zealand.
With Labelmaker’s clients often working in highly regulated industries, such as food and beverage, health, and pharma, the version control and compliance capabilities offered by Microsoft 365 enable their teams to track printing and packaging changes accurately.
Ali explains: “When Tecala managed the Office 365 and Microsoft Teams roll-out, they managed all licensing requirements and connectivity into Azure, along with the integration of all sites into a centralised Active Directory.
“As the business has grown, Tecala has ensured that new and existing sites remain fully compatible with LAN connectivity, reconnections, and network uplifts. They also managed O365 tenancy consolidation, so when acquisitions bring new locations into the business, they can be integrated smoothly into the existing network and Microsoft environment,” he says.
Ali Tirgar, Head of IT – Labelmakers
Tecala’s Cyber Security Team, is now leading Labelmakers through a Security Improvement and Standardisation Project that will replace the old VPN, standardise software installations, improve device visibility, and enable secure global access without relying on VPN connections.
The MPLS network will remain the primary method for connecting Labelmakers’ eight sites – supporting all site-to-site traffic, its ERP connectivity, and business-critical applications – but the new VPN will provide secure, direct cloud access for remote staff without having to ‘tunnel’ through the MPLS first.
“Our Security Improvement and Standardisation Project has been a game-changer,” says Ali. “We’re on track to achieve our CIS18 Certification and we’re using modern identity-based, zero-trust principles, while reducing reliance on a central VPN concentrator – which can be a bottleneck.
“The MPLS network means all changes, updates, and troubleshooting are handled centrally, reducing the IT overhead at each branch and avoiding the operational burden of having to manage the eight sites locally.
“This enables us to manage our IT budget more effectively and handle more day-to-day issues with our internal teams – while still relying on Tecala for support in more complex rollouts and upgrades,” he says.
Before engaging Tecala, projects at Labelmakers were run individually with limited integration and interconnectivity. But that all changed in 2015 with first network implementation.
As we head into the AI-driven era Tecala’s Automation Data and AI consultants are regularly engaging with Ali and his leadership team to ensure the business is future-ready.
“By bundling and implementing multiple IT and security measures in parallel, Tecala has kept our sensitive R&D and product design data fully protected across all facilities, which is absolutely critical to our business.
“We’re looking to explore AI and network intelligence to improve our forecasting and flexibility, while still maintaining strong security and standardisation. Increasing adoption of Microsoft Copilot will be part of that journey, along with the cultural change needed to embed it into the way we work. We’re also considering AI training and workshops with Tecala’s AI team to help us unlock its full potential.”
“Over the last ten years Tecala has been a trusted advisor for us, helping us make smart technology decisions that are critical to our infrastructure and how we deliver exceptional services to our clients.
“They’ve always stood out from the crowd by showing a genuine willingness to adapt to our unique operational requirements – compared to many other MSPs who seem to push a one-size-fits-all approach. Our partnership with Tecala has ensured that every technology investment we make is aligned with Labelmakers’ growth strategy, operational demands, and competitive advantage.”
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